Generally, snowmobile skis are made of metal, such as steel or aluminum. Snowmobile metal skis are found to show a higher wear than that of any kind of plastic skis and, when wear is important, snowmobile performance is significantly reduced. Metal skis have a tendency to stick onto the ice which thereby significantly increases friction forces which shorten the life of skis. This induces a higher drag between the metal skis and the ice, which leads to higher gas consumption. Also, the appearance of a worn metal ski depreciates its value.
In the last decade, many plastic ski designs have been developed and fabricated. Such skis may be found described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,040,818 issued Aug. 20, 1991 to Metheny, U.S. Pat. No. 5,165,709 issued Nov. 24, 1992 to Jacques and U.S. Pat. No. 5,443,278 issued Aug. 22, 1995 to Berto. It has been found that plastic skis show better overall riding performance than metal skis. All presently known plastic skis are produced using a process called compression molding with ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE), which process has long production cycles. Compression molded plastic skis are much more expensive than metal skis because of this longer production cycle and of design limitations, such as wall thickness. Heavy metal frame works must be added to the ski skin for extra strength. However, upon front impact on these plastic skis, the metal frame works deform permanently, which results in the need to replace them.
Also, metal and plastic skis presently used require the incorporation of a separate handle to the overall assembly. In the above mentioned U.S. Pat. No. 5,165,709, the compression molded plastic ski has its front handle as part of the sole; however, an additional assembly operation is needed to bend back the handle and secure it to the sole end stiffener.